This past Saturday we were in Fergus, ON, for their 175th Annual Fall Fair. 175 years! That’s a long time. The weather was pretty good. The skies were clear and the sun was out, but it definitely had the crisp feel of a fall day. The whole event was pretty interesting. They had the Golden Helmets there, unfortunately we missed them. They had already finished their demonstration by the time we arrived to set-up. For those of you who don’t know who the Golden Helmets are they the OPP’s precision motorcycle team. Think the Snow Birds or the Blue Angels on motorcycles. OK, maybe not as cool as fighter jets but they are still pretty impressive. They also had an OPP helicopter and the Lumberjack Company was doing a demo competition. Hats of to the guys who hustle up those poles while carrying chain saws. The big event was in the evening, a truck and tractor pull. Pretty incongruous steel pan music and tractor pulls, but music is for everyone, right? I have to give credit to the audience they really enjoyed us and we had a good time. Plus the event was pretty easy work wise. They already had a tent and a stage set-up and we could pull our truck right up to the stage, so unloading was a breeze.

Well this past Saturday was our last full performance of the summer. While I am sad to see it go I am also happy that we will get back to learning new songs and hopefully doing some school workshops and community clinics. That’s the great thing about it just when you are ready for a change of pace, voila! The performance went well. It was at the Parry Sound Airport’s 8th Annual Fall Fly-In. It’s kind of fitting, we started the year at the Parry Sound Dragon Boat Festival and we ended it back in Parry Sound. Little history fact for you, our very first public performance was in Parry Sound way back in 2001. There was this cray little plan that runs on two 15 hp motors. Can you believe it? They also had a Fokker triplane (maybe better described by saying, The Red Baron’s plane) and a Sopwith biplane. Also some guy flew in with a pretty cool stunt biplane. I heard that they had 3,000 people through out the day. The runway was super busy. I sure am glad I wasn’t the guy on the ground directing all the air traffic.

As a kind reader pointed out the link I had put up for the podcast sure did link you to a CBC podcast of the “The World This Weekend”. It just so happened I linked it to the wrong one. I have fixed the previous link and here it is again. CBC PODCAST. Thanks for the heads up!